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Dispatch #2 - the Evangelist
Sunday, September 28, 2003
Okay, I haven't even gotten to Beijing yet. Still on the plane. It's kind of a sleepless haze right now. I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in two days. It's really cramped here in coach. Someone remind me why I put up with this so much. 12 hours, sheez and no upgrade.
Well, if the last trip going to Tokyo, put me next to a Southern Baptist minister from Malaysia, who explained to me the difference between a calling from God, and simply following your career.
“A call is very different from a career. Hence, a call is not a career. It is possible to speak of one's career as the road one took in life (the companies you work for, the designations you were given, etc.). It is the path one chooses and plans to travel professionally. The destination is primary. The road is well marked. The rest is up to the traveler.
“A call, on the other hand, has no maps, no itinerary to follow, no destination to envision. Rather, a call depends upon hearing a Voice. The organ of faith is the ear or our heart, not the eye. Everything depends on the relationship between the listener and the One who calls.”
As fate would have it, this time I'm sitting next to an evangelist
from Jerusalem. No that's not Jerusalem Nebraska either, it's Israel.
Talking to him for 10+ hours, sounds like I'm listening to a testimony
from one of the speakers the Christian Perspectives course. He's
a father with seven kids. Like all those speakers we heard who've
served time in the field, and learned lessons about faith, career,
calling and how in the world do you survive and home school a family
of seven kids while you're in a foreign country and living off an
evangelist's salary.
In short, he has held various jobs in Israel, initially as an engineer, working with technology companies, then with the government, then completely as a street evangelist, speaking directly with the parties in conflict and a visible part of the community where soldiers really do patrol the streets, and people are in fear of getting on buses because of the threat of bombs. From this I've learned that there are actually 4 people groups in Israel, Jerusalem in particular. Jews, Israeli Arabs, Christians and Palestinians. I guess it's rather strange that the Christians are mostly of Arab descent, and all except the Palestinians serve in the Israeli army.
So what in the world is this white, Southern, tentmaker from Israel doing going to Beijing. He told me China is a calling put on his mother, which he feels he must be true to. So this is his third trip in a year. He plans to go back to Jerusalem next month.
Currently he's associated with no particular organized church right now, in fact it didn't seem like he was associated with any particular organization at all. It all seemed kind of creepy to me, so I asked him how he manages his finances, and he simply said 'faith' the less he worried about it, the more things somehow worked out.
His methods seemed evangelical and scripture based, he has no formal seminary training. He seemed more an engineer from the South i.e.... Florida. He was a person more interested in being your friend, and buddy, and sharing the good news; rather than a man stuck on ideology and fixed notions of worship, fellowship, doctrine and tradition. He witnesses by telling stories, about the power of prayer, and the miracles which God has performed. I think I've heard that story about Genghis Khan, Marco Polo, the call for missionaries, the mountain and the earthquake before. I think two different speakers from the perspectives course told that story.
I gave him my schpeal about why I'm going to China. I'm going to get into some kind of trouble, but... how could I not describe the trip to Gansu province, and the company I am to visit in Shanghai. He's inspired by my story and the ways in which God is working in China.
His reasons for coming to China are far more simple. He doesn't really seem to have fixed plan of what he's going to do, who he's going to meet, or even where he's going once he lands.
In any case there's something really strange about this evangelist I met. Perhaps when I asked him where he called home, he hesitated for a moment, then said Pensacola FL. To him that's home, if only because some of his grown kids were living there, and that's where his wife is right now. If he were in his mid 20's or 30's, and unmarried or without kids, I would have just put him in the same category as all the other people I know wandering around the globe, trying to find God's calling in their lives. Yet, there's something inspiration and deeply unsettling, that here's a man with seven grown kids, and five grandkids, who's simply going to China, staying in hostels, and pretty much acting like he's 20 as opposed to 60 years old.
Maybe it's because he has indeed rejected his career, in order to pursue a fuzzy vision, a calling without a solid career, or even a solid organization behind him. Maybe it's the fear looking at the point of view of his kids and having a dad like that, who would trek his family around in a foreign country as not even a tentmaker or missionary. Someone who felt called more to a mission, and serving a people, rather than a career. Perhaps this kind of person, stirs the deepest fears I have about the nature of the gospel in our lives today.
Maybe it's the fact that the book I brought on the flight "The Transformation of American Religion: How we actually live our faith" (Alan Wolfe '03) it exactly describes how a person like this evangelist. How he fits into the spectrum of our religious canvas without an organization behind him. When worship becomes a rock concert, fellowship becomes a therapy session, doctrine is based simply on a statement of faith, and tradition is thrown out the window. What remains? Are we living our lives in vain? This is the fear in my life.